Archive for the ‘Tweets’ Category

Here’s the latest in my 100-part series on Donald Trump getting under my skin.

As a white cis-gender heterosexual American man, I am rarely if ever the victim of prejudice. Thus, when Trump blames American problems on, say, immigrants, my objections are more intellectual than visceral. I don’t personally experience queasiness, sadness, rage, or fear in the way that an immigrant (or a child of immigrants, or a dark-skinned native who might be mistaken for an immigrant) might.

There’s one partial exception, though: the President’s recent comment (on Twitter, since repeated at CPAC) that the news media are “the enemy of the American people!”

When my ten-year-old son asked me about this, I found myself choking up. “My dad spent twenty years of his life working for a newspaper,” I stammered. “He did his best to gather good information and explain it clearly. What’s so horrible about that?!?” My thoughts turned to my dad’s sister, a longtime copy editor at BusinessWeek … to their great uncle (?) Robert J. Bender, who covered the White House for the United Press Bureau around the time of Woodrow Wilson … to my own forays into journalism. A few tears fell. My son patted my leg sympathetically.

At that moment, there was no room in my head for cerebral ideas about Trump’s rhetorical strategies or how they might relate to his policy goals. All I could think was: the President of the United States has insulted my family and our earnest pursuit of knowledge. That’s not really what he did, of course, but that’s exactly what it felt like.

The moment passed fairly quickly for me. Before long I resumed my status as a white cis-gender heterosexual American man shaking his head at Trump with detached bemusement. But my heart goes out to the truly vulnerable targets of Trump’s rants, who may not be able to move on so easily.

Of course, nobody likes to see negative news coverage of oneself, but here Trump is (A) dismissing the work of an entire profession and (B) disingenuously claiming that he tweets largely to correct media distortions. (Why can’t he just admit that tweeting is fun for him?)

In sifting through his media-related tweets, though, I came across two that sounded more like justifiable self-defense.

I have NOTHING to do with The Apprentice except for fact that I conceived it with Mark B & have a big stake in it. Will devote ZERO TIME!

For Trump-hating liberals, that headline is pure catnip. I certainly fell for it. “My God,” I thought, “why can’t he let go of his stupid reality TV show and focus on governing the country?”

But the reporting in the article itself is limited to two unremarkable claims by Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway: (1) presidents have some free time in which to pursue non-government interests and (2) Trump is meeting with people who are helping him figure out whether he can or cannot be involved in things like The Apprentice.

In other words, Conway did NOT say that Trump would be working on The Apprentice, yet the clickbaity headline indicates the opposite. In this particular case, Trump’s anger was justified.

In 2017, as we retreat to our respective bubbles and echo chambers, let’s remember that no source is infallible, and that our adversaries are sometimes right.